Will Wright’s next project: HiveMind

HiveMind is a game, and it’s also the name of a new Berkeley, Calif.-based startup Wright is unveiling today in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat.

The idea is a new evolution in gaming that Wright calls “personal gaming.” It is a game that can customize itself for the individual player, taking into account aspects of player’s real-life situation as elements of the game.

It’s not an easy concept to understand, particularly because Wright isn’t describing the game in detail yet.

“Rather than craft a game like FarmVille for players to learn and play, we learn about you and your routines and incorporate that into a form of game play,” Wright said.

He noted, for instance, that there may be 50 different dimensions to a person that could be learned through data collection. Some of those dimensions could be location-based, like where you are, where your friends are, and how much money is in your wallet. It may sound like a creepy invasion of your privacy for game to know that about you, but Wright wants to emphasize the entertainment value of sharing and why people will probably share that information gladly.

So Will Wright has moved on from Bar Karma (which I don’t think we’ll be seeing a second season, sadly…onto a new project – HiveMind. Reading the lengthy article from VentureBeat, I’d have to say I wish Will the best of luck, but I don’t think I’m going to take part of it. I don’t like the idea of playing around with my personal info. Sure, I do share my info occasional on Facebook – but I don’t use any of it when it comes to gaming…especially gaming on Facebook.

I really wish he’d come back to EA and take control over the Sims franchise as well as SimCity. He’d rather move on to new things, but honestly I wish he would have stuck with what he is known for – the father of simulation.

2 Comments

jesse james
on December 4, 2011 at 7:18 am

Maybe he’s like Ian Mckellan and didn’t want type casted as it were. But I do miss his boundry pushing imagination & creativity… That is what made the sims franchise so great and is what is missing in TS3… EA needs Will Wright back…